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We live our lives, our careers, in the midst of the world around us. We don’t live or work in isolation, even if working from home. How we deal with that world, with its tragedies, and with the needed work we are here to do, further defines the impact we can have.

Some have been watching the news cycle repeat and repeat. Others have been avoiding the news. In either case, to be emotionally healthy, we have needed to deal. With Emotional Intelligence only you can define what works for you. Do that… Only you can decide where your focus, prayers, and direction will be. To each of you I send prayers for peace, compassion, and resiliency.

For me, in a surreal way, with all that the world has to offer at the moment, my work has continued, as it does, with clients, patients, students and so many others. As an example, in speaking with an associate this week, he told me his focus, as always, is on trying to make more than enough money so that his family can have everything he would ever want them to have – whether they want it or not. That he says is the necessity for him to feel that he is a success. He acknowledges that it is crazy making yet feels powerless to stop.

He is a highly motivated, successful, compassionate man who doesn’t need or want much for himself but who believes his family should have options on everything, traveling first class to and from vacations, eating only the best, etc. etc. etc. He claims this is his dream for his life, yet is it? It seems more that he is putting pressure on himself to fill their illusionary dreams; dreams they don’t want or care about.

Imagine the pressure, when we forget we are the gift we give our partner as well as our children. When a partner takes me to a place I love, or a concert he knows I would cherish, the gift is a delight, but the real present is his thoughtfulness, his kindness, and his understanding. The “gift” is secondary since the connection is the real joy maker.

My question to this associate was, “Do you realize that you taking the time to focus on what you would really want to do with your career, your business, would make you more alive, more passionate, and a more present/pleasant partner?” His family, especially his wife, would love watching him come alive in doing what he loves. In truth, I have repeatedly seen in my work with entrepreneurs, that when they are doing what excites them, while developing the necessary skills, they end up making so much more income.  Primarily because our clients are drawn to our passion for what we are doing as well as our skills.

Service is a gift. Service with joy and passion is a calling card. As we take today to catch up with ourselves, to reflect, and to play before going into next week, acknowledge for a moment, that the world around us may or may not be going the way we dream, but our willingness to bring all of who we are to it, is the gift we give this world. It needs us in our authentic power and leadership. In what drives us. From that place, the needed tools of love and compassion come naturally and so very easily. The world needs those traits right now, as does each one of us.

Dorothy

Dr. Dorothy’s life story of coming from an orphanage, being raised in the housing projects of South Boston, becoming a Catholic nun, an international airline stewardess, a wife, mother, graduate faculty member, Clinical Instructor at a Medical School, and so much more provides the perfect backdrop for her message of joy, humor, passion and faith as the necessary tools for life.